• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930

Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930

Hardcover

Series: Princeton Legacy Library, Book 5224

Ancient History GeneralGeneral Middle Eastern History

ISBN10: 0691656568
ISBN13: 9780691656564
Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
Published: Dec 4 2018
Pages: 272
Weight: 1.72
Height: 0.63 Width: 8.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English

From the 1880s through the 1920s a motley collection of American scholars, soldiers of fortune, institutional bureaucrats, and financiers created the academic fields that give us our knowledge of the ancient Near East. Bruce Kuklick's new book begins with the story of the initial adventure of these determined investigators--a twelve-year dig near the Biblical Babylon, at Nippur, conducted at intervals from 1888 through 1900 and bankrolled by the Babylonian Exploration Fund. To unearth tens of thousands of cunneiform tablets, the leaders of this venture faced harsh living conditions in the desert and an academic war of each against all that was quickly begun at the site itself. As their knowledge increased, they risked their personal religious beliefs in the search for historical truth. Kuklick discusses their tribulations to illuminate two other contemporary developments: first, the maturation of the American university, particularly in contrast to its German counterpart; and second, the influence of religious-secular conflict on the ways in which Western scholarship appropriated or appreciated other cultures.

1 different editions

Also available

Also in

Ancient History General